After The Work

YouTube is full of mesmerizing videos about travel, space, and many other topics. My favorite to watch is how blacksmiths make Damascus steel. Damascus steel is a type of metal used to make swords, knives, and whatever else one might want to. It features beautiful patterns in the metal due to the repeated folding of the glowing hot metal. It is stronger than normal metal blades, as well as being famed for their sharpness.

What is mesmerizing about watching the process is how the metal is put under great stress. Extreme temperature is required for the raw steel to change shape. The metal is folded over and over again on itself in order to produce the beautiful patterning. To accomplish this, the metal is also pounded over and over again, pressed and squeezed with great force. The blade is heated and quenched in cool water or oil- hot to cold in an instant. After all that work, the blade is ground down under the touch of a grinding wheel and sandpaper. Once ground to shape, the blade is sharpened to split a hair over hours on the grinding stone. The best moment is when the blade is etched with Ferric Chloride to reveal the beautiful patterning within.

If the metal be sentient and could somehow speak and feel, it would describe the incredible pain that took place during its transformation. The heat, the stress, being struck, ground, and bent all place great stress on the metal, causing the atoms to rearrange themselves into how the smith desires them. It might even be happy to be a beautiful hand crafted knife or axe, grateful to be so strong and sharp. To get to that moment, however, was a process it would never want to go through ever again!

Scripture speaks about a “refining fire” the purifies metal. This work is the saving work of Jesus in our life, cleansing us from our sin. Getting “saved” makes us into pure metal, holy spiritual material to be worked and forged into what God desires us to be. However, not every problem we face is a consequence of sin, much of our hardship is the result of God allowing events to transpire in our life so that we learn and grow. When we can accept that our difficulties are stepping stones to growth instead of stumbling blocks life puts in front of us because “its not fair”, then we have truly become mature and able to face life as an adult.

Our path is a mystery, it is difficult to understand why things happen the way they do. Why is nice to know, but irrelevant to our immediate needs. The problems we face today are still here whether we understand “why” or we don’t. In fact, “why” can paralyze us from action because we want some element of control in our life. We often understand the “whys” in retrospect, which can instruct us for future scenarios. It is better to accept we are like ants on a log floating down the river. They do not have control over the log or the water, but they can observe, accept and grow.

The ups and downs of life are like the folds of a Damascus blade. They are a part of our process of becoming something greater. It requires heat, stress and pain because spiritual experience and growth often requires pain to move us away from sin and brokenness and towards God’s grace. There are times life soaks us in deep heat to where we feel as though we will melt. Other times we take blows from life’s hammer, those experiences shape us into new forms. If we accept God is in control, then we can accept that we are being shaped by God through his Word, Spirit, and our experiences.

Being sharpened can be satisfying, but a different kind of painful. We become sharper when we can lay aside our egos, understand our darkness, and share our insides with others. “Iron sharpens iron” it is written, meaning that fellowship with other believers on the path helps one another become more affective at life. So much of what is written about spiritual growth involves individual focus. We cannot become who we are to be in a vacuum. We experience life and are called to process it with others to help shape our experience and share the burden we carry. Sharing with others helps us incorporate our dark corners into our person through shared experience, relating to one another, rebuke and affirmation.

Finally one day we wash our face in the sink and look up into the mirror. We recognize the person looking back at us, but we are different, stronger, better than before. We begin to like the person in the mirror, even seeing ourselves through the eyes of Christ. It is like when the Damascus blade is etched in solution and the waste is washed away revealing something beautiful. We see how the patterns in our life produced patterns in our personhood. We can appreciate what we are being made to be by God, thankful we have been chosen to be more than we were.